We assume this coast is in Oregon. Horace Sykes was raised in Western Oregon and made frequent trips to the coast, even later when he made his living in Seattle and lived comfortably beside its “coast” at the western edge of the city, in Magnolia a few feet above the tides.  The driftwood is almost obligatory for a subject such as this one.  (But could this bleached fragment have drifted so high above the tides?  Perhaps the Oregon Department of Tourism moves them there.) For Sykes it also takes the place or role of a flowering bush and sculptured rock.  Except in postcards and Kodachrome slides we do not get a blue like that in this Pacific.”]